This week was quite a doozy, what with another job over and done and a post-surgery forecast of at best a whole lot of back and forth with the insurance company about bills and at worst a bill for one (1) total depletion of my savings (and then some). I'm going to take this week to collect my thoughts and build a little river cottage out of them, so I can drink coffee on a porch and remember how symbolic and cleansing moving water can be. SO, instead of an exploration of life, love and the pursuit of making little paper dealies, I'm going to share my current brain in a new format I'd like to call: THE LANGUAGE OF LINKS.

I'm trying to keep a tidy brain and a well kept soul these days, but if there's proof of the work I still have ahead of me, it's that body halo that seeps into my sheets. I will always think of that horrifying clorox commercial whenever I think of dirty sheets, and after my move, somehow my favorite ones ended up in the filthy snowy Brooklyn streets during my move to my new apartment, and I can barely look at them in the dresser without wincing. Im no starfish and I always sleep to one side of the bed (using the other as a shelf for magazines, books, paper stuff, etc. even while I sleep). It's summer and I live in a demure, but elderly house, so I leave a pretty lopsided impression on the bed. And I am striving to sleep in the clean light of balance (never go to bed dirty). I don't mind scrubbing laundry, in fact I rather like the rhythms and repetition but sheets are so long, and without one of those quintessential Brooklyn drying tower lines in the backyard, I haven't quite mastered the art of purging my sheets.

Do you know about Fels Naptha? It sounds like a faraway legend about a monster hidden away in the mountains, and thought it has been around for 100 years, it is also made by purex right around the corner and your grandma probably used it to get food stains out of your parents jammies. I'm thinking maybe this can be my secret weapon in my clean sheets for a cleaner Greg campaign. It is a delightfully weird color that implies ancient plants and other witchy ways, though I imagine it's actually made from a fair smattering of chemicals. What is it about scrubbing and cleaning? Laundry is the work I want to get to know better. I want to master it as I have scrubbing the dishes. I've never wanted my own washer and dryer more in my life. Perhaps it is the Japanese blood in me. I'm certainly intrigued by their new bible. And our love for life and laundry hacks in America are second only to theirs. Have you ever seen a japanese bathroom? It's efficient, it's economic, it's practical, it's downright inspiring from a design perspective.

This is a part of Japanese culture I really want to incorporate into my life. A deep respect for objects. In America we are caught in a cycle where our toothbrushes are so cheap, that there is no real benefit to taking care of them, and because we are told to throw them out every few months, we expect for them to be cheap at the supermarket, encouraging manufacturers to make a toothbrush even more cheaply than before. Objects made and selected with care can be a part of our lives for years and years. Things made the right way, can be fixed, repaired, improved, even, and certainly re-used (you'll notice that usually the best design becomes vintage the rest having completely fallen apart by then). Toothbrushes can become brushes for cleaning old metal tools or grout in the bathroom. But only if it was made well enough to be useful in it's second life. If you've never been scared at the heights of which the mountain of things you've thrown away in your life would loom above you, I will leave you with this brilliant animated short as some humpday thought for food.